


and they screamed: euhoe

by the sarcophagus (Disguise_of_Carnivorism)



Series: memetics [3]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Ariadne/Dionysus power-coupling it up, F/M, McCarthy Years, channeling that good old liberating witchcraft maenadry, completely aware that the 50's/60's mental health protocols were inherently oppressive to women, destroying all the boundaries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-13
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-14 20:26:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/841031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Disguise_of_Carnivorism/pseuds/the%20sarcophagus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Red Scare is more frightening for some than for others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and they screamed: euhoe

**Author's Note:**

> For the "3-sentences" tumblr meme: Ariadne/Dionysus. The McCarthy years.

She is chaos in high heels and a nurse costume they stole from one of his old Hollywood sets; he is the golden-haired straight-jawed smooth-suited wunderkind with an edge of manic hedonism in the way he grips the wine-bottle and fingers his gun. They tromp through the dully-glowing halls flipping lights and slipping keys into the locks of padded rooms, fingers on pursed lips urging “ _shh, shh_ ” (as if her heels weren’t clacking like Zeus’s thunder on the tiles, as if the infiltration costumes were anything but pretenses to dress up and wreak their havoc in style).

The inmates creep from their prisons, limbs shaking, eyes bright. 

Orderlies rush towards them at each floor, only to fall to the ground with eyes wider more with recognition than fear of the gun pointed lazily in their faces. He doesn’t look at them, doesn’t need to—just smirks with her in vicious amusement. This is Dionysus, the tarnished Golden Boy turned bloodthirsty savior, and Ariadne, the woman who tore down a city around her, whose face rode wanted posters until the government just forgot. They are in the “sick ward,” now, and they will demolish it with their own deluge of insanity.

She leads them through the labyrinthine dead-light hallways out to living air and sharp night (always the golden thread in dark places). He follows not far behind, reveling in the boundaries they have crushed.

The first step away from the suffocating prison is a deluge of pale scrambling limbs and tangled hair, and then they are running. Dionysus smiles his wine-dark smile and something wild in them knows exactly what to do. They are the rejected, the imprisoned, the ones too garish for humanity’s sight, too red to color the city streets with their presence. Sons too womanly, husbands too poor, job too masculine, hair-curlers too tight—beneath the stars, the scapegoats begin to churn and twirl and bask in their freedom. They dance in moonlight at the forest’s edge. And soon they are all shapeless wraith-white shifts and writhing limbs that wield tree-limbs broken into warheads.

He soaks in their work—the frenzied dance, the absolute destruction of the blaming constraining madhouse that is society’s boundaries, the way their charts and papers will be mysteriously absent when dawn light comes—and she pulls him in for a kiss. They meet in the dark under the stars as the madwomen convulse for freedom and the heavens, and then they break apart, twin gods feeding on one another in the night.

He smiles. She reapplies her lipstick. It is red, blood red, redder than the Scare. 


End file.
